The West Bend Stir Crazy 82308 Popcorn Maker: On My Bad List for a Reason

Wow, I love this engagement thing. There are parties where people provide you with gifts- some that you want and some that you do not want- and feed you booze and food. What more could a guy ask for? Hmm, fewer parties, but we will not go down that road in case my wonderful fiance were to read this.

At any rate, we had a coed gift shower recently and got lots of cool stuff. We also got a few things that we did not register for. One of those things was the West Bend Stir Crazy Popcorn Maker. Of course we ooh and ahhhh'ed enough to make the gift giver happy, but my personal thought was along the lines of, "What the h_ll are we going to do with this"?

I quickly got voted down by my popcorn loving fiance. She wanted to keep it and could not wait to use it. Wonderful! This is $40 in return money that we could have put to something useful and needed.

Which is basically the crux of my argument with the product. Why in the world does anyone need a popcorn maker? You probably have an oven (Which always worked perfectly fine when it came to popcorn.) and if you do not have an oven you might have a microwave (Which always worked perfectly fine when it came to popcorn.) in which to heat popcorn. So, why could you possibly need a machine that does one thing- heats popcorn. I mean if you really need or want something like this, how about my new invention- the hamburger cooker. Yep, it does one thing and that is that it cooks hamburgers.

Hello. Am I the only one who thinks this is kind of a silly waste of money? Wouldn't the $40 price tag be better spent on something you could use? And will use? That is part of the problem with the Stir Crazy; how often will you use it?

Me thinks that the positives and selling points are also somewhat exaggerated. West Bend claims that the popcorn will not stick or burn with this machine. While this is true, it is also misleading. The heat mechanism stays on as long as the machine is plugged in. Which means that you cannot leave the machine for more than a few seconds (Ah, this sounds like fun to me.) or you will, inevitably end up with burnt popcorn.

I get the feeling that the company means that the popcorn will not burn if you follow the cooking directions. Makes sense, but at the same time the machine should have a timer that will turn it off after a certain period of time.

Another problem that I have with the Stir Crazy is that it is big. I am not sure who West Bend thinks we make popcorn for? Heck, I might as well start showing movies and serving popcorn to the entire block. You can make that much popcorn with the Stir Crazy.

One the good side of things, the Stir Crazy does make good popcorn. The kernels cook evenly and the butter gets spread evenly. The popcorn does taste a lot closer to what you get in the theatre's than any other home cooked popcorn and, I must admit, has a very good taste to it. Also, the Stir Crazy is very easy to clean. You simply remove the lid and wash. You can take a rag over the inside and base of the machine. Yes, pretty simple. Heck, if you want to get really wild, you can turn the lid over and serve from it.

However, the bottom line is that I cannot recommend this machine unless you eat an inordinate amount of popcorn. I do truly mean a heck of a lot of popcorn. While the popcorn tastes good, the rest of the machine is too inconvenient to use frequently and too large to keep anywhere that might invite frequent usage.

I really wish I could have talked my wonderful fiance into returning the Stir Crazy. Alas, we are stuck with it for the time being (Maybe I can re-gift it!!!) and I guess it will spend 363 days of the year in the basement.